The present invention relates to firearms, and more particularly to mechanisms for operating firearms and devices for retaining cartridges.
Certain firearms include a receiver, a barrel connected with the receiver, and a rotatable cartridge-containing cylinder connected with and/or disposed within the receiver. The cylinder has a plurality of chambers for separately retaining cartridges and functions to separately align each chamber with the barrel for projecting or “firing” of a bullet through the barrel bore. Such cylinders are typically mounted on a spindle that is either fixed to the receiver or mounted on a pivotable carrier that is rotatable from out of alignment with the barrel to a position facilitating reloading of cartridges. Typically, these firearms have an operating mechanism connected with the receiver and engageable with the cylinder so as to rotate the cylinder, typically when a trigger or a hammer is pulled rearwardly, to separately position each cartridge chamber with the barrel bore.
Further, a variety of other firearm operating mechanisms are known, including pump or slide actions, bolt actions, gas-operated semi-automatic or automatic actions. Each such operating mechanism basically functions to “load” a cartridge into position for firing a bullet through the barrel, remove the spent cartridge from alignment with the barrel, and then load another cartridge.